New professional body
Society committed to development of an influential
professional body
From Mr J. Holmes
I am writing to you concerning your leading article “Time
for reflection” (PJ, 17 May 2008, p582) and its suggestion
that “maybe
it is time for the Society to take a back seat and for others to lead”.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society is committed to the creation of a new
member-focused professional body that is inclusive of all the interests
within the pharmacy family. There is broad acceptance both inside and
outside the Society that this new body should not simply be the Society
rebranded.
That said, the Society has the intellectual and financial assets to provide
the essential foundations for the new professional body. This belief
is supported both by the Government and many in the wider pharmacy profession.
In his submission to the All-Party Pharmacy Group inquiry into the future
of pharmacy in April 2007, Lord Hunt stated that it was important that
the royal college should be a new entity, but that it should build on
the foundation and excellent work of the Society.
In the May 2007 report
on professional regulation and leadership in pharmacy, Lord Carter commented
that his working party would very much hope that the Society would be
a “central plank in the formation of a royal college”.
More recently the Clarke Inquiry report of April 2008 stated: “Overall,
the thrust of the evidence we received is that the Society should indeed,
as Lord Carter had hoped, be an integral and major part of the new professional
body.”
The report went on to say that the Society is the only organisation
around which the profession can coalesce and meet the timetable of change.
In their letter to The Pharmaceutical Journal (24 May 2008,
p623), members of the
Waterloo Group wrote: “We are keen to work
with the Society to ensure that [the Transitional Committee] produce
a prospectus
that
will encourage all members of the pharmacy profession to join the new
professional body.”
I and the Society's Council remain committed to the development of an
influential, supportive and inclusive professional body. We will work
closely with the Transitional Committee to be chaired (or led if you
prefer) by Nigel Clarke to make sure that happens.
Jeremy Holmes
Chief Executive and Registrar
Royal Pharmaceutical Society
Members could meet their Waterloo
From Mr D. I. Simpson, FRPharmS
I would like to deliver a note of warning to the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society’s members in relation to the Waterloo group of pharmacy
organisations.
This group seems to be trying to set the agenda in relation to the establishment
of a professional body once regulation has been taken away from the Society.
It is acting independently of the Society’s Council and the democratic
machinery of the Society in a manner that can only be seen as trying
to upstage the Council and by-pass that machinery.
For instance, when the Society’s Council met on 21 May before
the Society’s annual general meeting, it had no inkling that a
letter had been submitted to The
Pharmaceutical Journal signed
by officers or
officials of various pharmacy organisations supporting the Waterloo group
(PJ, 24 May 2008, p623).
The letter expressed support for the
Clarke report on the establishment of a future professional body and
suggested
how
the Clarke report might be taken forward, the very thing that the Council
had been discussing that day.
The first that members of Council knew
about the letter was when they attended the annual general meeting in
the evening and heard the chief executive of the College of Pharmacy
Practice tell those present that the letter was about to appear.
The Waterloo group’s actions are, in my opinion, verging on the
hostile. If the members of the Society were concerned at one time about
the Society’s assets being seized by the General Pharmaceutical
Council, they ought now to be concerned about those assets being sequestered
by a self-selected group of organisations trying to create a body to
their liking.
Among those organisations is the Association of Pharmacy
Technicians UK, even though the Society’s membership has yet to
be consulted on the crucial issue of whether technicians should be granted
membership of the Society or not.
I would like to comment briefly on the origins of the Waterloo group.
We started to hear about it when the Department of Health’s Carter
working party was deliberating on the creation of the General Pharmaceutical
Council and professional leadership in pharmacy.
The Carter working party,
it will be recalled, commissioned a King’s Fund seminar on 20 March
2007, and the “Waterloo agreement” was one of the things
presented at the meeting by the chief executive of the College of Pharmacy
Practice. The agreement is set out in the King’s Fund report of
the meeting.
Since the Waterloo group meeting only took place on 15 March,
five days before the seminar, it suggests that there might be some form
of
departmental
blessing for the College of Pharmacy Practice’s actions in convening
the group.
The Society certainly had no hand in it and members of the
Society’s Council, of which I am one, knew nothing about the group
before its “agreement” was published (in April 2007).
The King’s Fund seminar, of course, was set up to explore the case
for a royal college for pharmacy. Again, the Society had no hand in the
organising of the seminar.
The royal college idea was mooted, readers will recall in the White Paper
on professional regulation, which called for a body akin to a royal college
to be set up to work alongside a new General Pharmaceutical Council.
Where did the idea of a royal college for pharmacy spring from? None
other than from the College of Pharmacy Practice, in its evidence to
the Foster review that preceded the publication of the White Paper.
The College of Pharmacy Practice was set up by the Society in 1981. Its
objects include promoting education and training of pharmacists and establishing
standards for vocational training in pharmacy practice. It was run by
the Society for its first five years, then, as was the original intention,
floated free. Under the circumstances it is distressing to see the college
seeking to wrong-foot the body that gave it its very existence.
The college may well play a key part in the new professional body of
the future, but it would be better advised to behave in a less subversive
manner. And the sooner it does so the better.
Because, even if it succeeds
in neutralising the Society’s Council, it still has to face the
Society’s 47,000 members, most of whom have no connection with
the 900-member college, or any of the other bodies in the Waterloo group,
for that matter.
The people that will be deciding the future of the Society are, of course,
its members. There are certain key issues upon which, under the terms
of the Charter, they must be signify their approval.
These include new
categories of membership, a change in the composition of the Council,
an alteration to the Charter, any change in the name of the Society and
dissolution of the Society.
In my view, the new Society will be successful long-term only if it attracts
a significant majority of registered pharmacists into voluntary membership.
This means that the proposals must enthuse those in what is, and is always
likely to be, the major sector — community pharmacy.
The sooner
that all concerned engage with and seek to represent the views of the
rank and file on the best strategy to attract that majority the better. Douglas Simpson
Member of Council
Royal Pharmaceutical Society
How will pharmacists identify themselves in future?
From Mr P. Lowe, MRPharmS
How will pharmacists formally identify themselves as currently practising
when they are no longer members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society,
since membership will be voluntary of whatever representative body subsequently
comes into being?
The addition of “pharmacist” after one’s qualifications
seems to me simple and elegant and follows the precedent of practising
barristers: but since the title is also available to non-practising pharmacists,
it may be that some legislation, ruling or convention is required.
Peter Lowe
Newcastle upon Tyne |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal